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Research Ethics & Governance

Human Biomedical Research Act & Research Governance

The Singapore Human Biomedical Research Act (HBRA) regulates the conduct of human biomedical research. CBmE has been involved in the framing and development of research governance in Singapore over the years and enjoys a close working relationship with government agencies concerned with research governance.

This project involves three strands of research on the HBRA – interpretative; comparative and normative –supported by a start-up grant from NUS. The interpretative strand seeks to study how the research community in Singapore interprets the scope, obligations, limitations and related notions, of the HBRA. The comparative strand compares the HBRA with ongoing proposed revisions to the US Common Rule (federal regulations governing research involving human subjects) and to the CIOMS Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research. The normative strand will evaluate the merits of the HBRA in balancing protection of research subjects and tissue donors, ensuring accountability, and promoting efficiency in research and oversight.

Since Singapore launched the national Biomedical Sciences Initiative in 2000, a governance framework for biomedical research has become institutionalised on the understanding that “good science” is dependent not only on rigorous application of scientific methods toward the production of generalisable knowledge, but must be consistent with fundamental ethical and societal values. In the context of ‘bioethics-as-public-policy’, research governance in Singapore and in leading scientific jurisdictions now comprise a complex mix of ethical, legal and social norms, concepts, techniques and practices. This in turn has profound impact on how biomedical science is understood and practised, as well as on the generation of scientific facticity. The study of this phenomena on and around a variety of biomedical research settings (including genetics, biobanking and pluripotent cell research) within Singapore and internationally is a key research focus of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics.

Calvin Ho, Leonardo D De Castro and Alastair V Campbell. Governance of Biomedical Research in Singapore and the Challenge of Conflicts of Interest. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2014) 23, 3:288-296.